It's the 2026 Poem-a-Week Challenge (This is a *poems only* thread.)

Me, Me


We assemble
like pies and quilts
at the county fair,
hoping for the blue ribbon,
needing to be chosen,
singled out,
a standout from the rest.

Thus, the tight-grabbing top
I wear concealing (but barely)
the vibrant prize underneath,
these leg-hugging jeans,
spotlighting an ass so smooth
and tight, a crotch lips and
fingers can’t wait to explore,
my eyes of blue, hair you want
to bury your nose in and inhale.

This body of endless joys –
pick me, the sexiest of the boys!

(Poem #6)
 
Yo ho, aye aye, I see your map,
inked with X’s, torn and slapped
against a mast that creaks with lore
gold promised twice, delivered nevermore.

You’re right, we sing of buried gleam,
but every chest is half a dream.
Coins don’t float, and neither do
the myths we sell the hungry crew.

We shout manifest! into the gale,
mistake morale for a heavier sail.
Call greed adventure, call theft fate,
then act surprised when decks debate.

Because gold is loud, but silence knows
the real reason a captain chose
to study stars instead of fists,
to read the tide, not just the myth.

Brawn swings first, then asks where to?
Brains say hold—there’s work to do.
Uncharted seas don’t care who’s strong,
they’ll drown you right and still feel calm.

Maps don’t come with moral keys.
Marks mean nothing till you decide what they mean.
Every legend starts that way
someone chose not just to take, but to stay.

And here’s the joke the sea keeps telling,
between the storms and sirens yelling:
the only treasure that lasts the trip
is the crew that doesn’t flip the ship.

So aye—let the gold sink, let dreams dissolve,
let “necessary” be the resolve.
Make it home, still breathing, still whole
that’s the haul they never told us was gold.

Now hoist the sail, not the lie.
Chart the stars.
Let the X drift by.


Bear 🐻
 
Au de la


To the discerning eye,
The fixing, measured eye, measuring,
To the discerning eye, I
Am uncannily beautiful, brown and surprisingly shiny,
Like black gold on sodden ground.

To the vivisecting eye,
That probes with surgical precision,
To the vivisector, interlocutor,
I am blossoming hag-seed,
De-(re)-formed, sent before my time.

To the administrative eye,
The cognoscente of parts,
Both working and non-working,
I am provisional, legitimate umber,
Licit and liminal being, au de la.

But I am wind and rain and meditation, and waters
of flight. Remember when we met,
In a room where thought was music, a cathedral of muscular
words, rills of rivered sound, unbound, unearthly.
Who thought then of names? Remember. Remember what it was
We saw – immanence wrapped in longing, and all, all
Was cellular, granular, possibility.

Imago, you and I, of a distant ministry, a cloistered country,
clay-sculpting, dreaming.


Week 1, Poem 1
 
Blood Tax

By Bear Sage

°

We pay in small cuts.

°

The deer dies so the pack eats.

The tree falls so the house stands.

The mother tears so the child breathes.

°

Nobody promised fair.

Nobody promised clean.

°

We plow the field.

Something in the soil

used to have a heartbeat.

°

The apple hangs heavy

because the branch breaks under lesser fruit.

°

This is the contract:

you get your bread,

your roof,

your one wild life

°

but you drag the carcass home yourself.

You splinter your hands on the wood.

You learn which roots are poison

by watching what dies.

°

No angels.

No demons.

Just the work.

°

The mountain doesn't care

what used to be a mountain of bodies.

It reaches anyway.

°

We reach anyway.

°

Cruelty isn't the opposite of beauty.

They're the same hand

holding the knife

holding the seed.
 
Dear Ari / A Kabbalah Poem

Now the vessels have been shattered
Now the shells have broke like hearts
Now the lights been spilled and scattered
Now’s the end and now’s the start

Now I stare at Sitra Achra
Now’s obscured by Kelipot
Now the sea of candles faded
Now’s the end and now’s the start

Now we’re picking up the pieces
Now we’re lighting all the sparks
Now we’re breaking a world broken
Now’s the end and now’s the start

Now the Shekhinah’s returning
Now her garments fall apart
Now we see her naked beauty
Now’s the end and now’s the start

Week 4 Poem 2 Total 9
 
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ACHING

I have been aching for you
My body craving you
No one else can satisfy me
The way that you do

I have been aching for you
You've been gone so long
I've almost given up
After you flew

I have been aching for you
Your touch like a breeze
Your kiss like a rich dessert
Your love runs me through

I have been aching for you
For your strength and your love
The power and pleasure you give
When I'm with you

I'll always ache for you
Till the end of all days
Till my life runs its full course
My heart is true
 
I hear this music
When I write my verse
Rhythms and melody
Jingling coins in my purse

Rhyming come naturally
When my body is rockin'
Rhythm is in my veins
Like bedboards when knockin'

I feel this joy inside
So stretched, satisfied
Emptiness filled with love
Rhythm never lied

My muse makes love to me
We fuck till i'm bled
Making our lovely child
This poem we've bred
 
Alex Pretti

°

He was a nurse.
Let that be said first.

A man trained to listen to breath,
to read the small alarms the body whispers
before it breaks.

°

He wore blue not as uniform
but as habit.
Scrubs softened by long shifts,
hands steady from holding strangers
through their worst hours.

°

He worked where lives hang by threads
and dignity matters.
He believed care was an action,
not a slogan.

°

He was not a threat.
He was not a target.
He was not an enemy of the state.

°

He stood in a street
with a phone in his hand
and conscience in his chest.

He watched.
He recorded.
He refused to look away.

°

That refusal
is what they answered.

°

Let us be clear.

What the agents chose to do
was not okay.
Not justified.
Not a mistake made in chaos.

A choice.

°

A choice to escalate.
A choice to silence.
A choice to end a life
that had spent its days
keeping others alive.

°

They will say protocol.
They will say threat.
They will say split second.

°

But the videos remember better.
The street remembers better.
His body remembers better.

°

This was not enforcement.
This was punishment.

°

First the immigrants.
Those without papers.
Those without names that fit neatly
into government files.

°

Then the dissenters.
The witnesses.
The ones who stand still
and hold the camera
instead of their fear.

°

Then those whose skin is wrong,
whose gender is inconvenient,
whose existence interrupts
the story power tells itself
to sleep at night.

°

History does not begin with violence.
It begins with permission.

°

Alex Pretti did not give it.
And for that, he was killed.

°

So we say his name
not as a symbol
but as a line in the sand.

°

And we ask the only honest question left:

Who is next?
 

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After Alex Pretti

I see these things when my eyes open:

Light, blinding, shimmering insouciance, a canopy
Of urges above me, a carpet of limits grounding my feet,
And then you, and you, and you, and they, and we, and
All in the light, blinding shimmer.

The wind is at hand, not far away, and when it comes,
We are swept up, concentric levitation.

Instinct? Intention? It is hard to tell,
But just as you reach out to me, I reach, mirror, respond
To your call, and suddenly –
We are a chain, a rope, coiled, Homo Iunctus.

I see a coiled beast, conquering angel, cosmic tethering – the stars store
Our bones, waiting for us to be born - hand within hand within longing hand.

So, when you are shot, beaten, knifed, taken, sold, enslaved,
Violated, ripped, sliced – Iced - bombed, whipped, quartered, burned –
The many ways history has chosen – how must my pen stand inkless?

Week 1, Poem 2, Total 2
 
Suits in blue on Blue!


Fashion guy, that French Guy
in a world wide plethora
of blue suited humans
behind shaded eyes,
in blue tinted accents
they are messaging
blue on blue;
“Aspirin Guy”.
“Le fuck you doing?”

Trade News just over
the picket fence
the Maple leaves
to play ice Hockey
with Yum Cha EVs.

fb

WTF! Nightly ordering
pizza with aspirin again.



#8 Winner winner chicken dinner.
 
Accountable

Every morning I wake up in a body
that didn't have to run, didn't have to hide,
didn't get pulled over for existing,
didn't get followed through a store like prey.

This skin—this pale inheritance
opens doors before I knock,
gets second chances like they're coupons,
turns my mistakes into misunderstandings.

And you want me to write pretty poems?
To talk about sunsets and fucking daffodils
while your son can't wear a hoodie without becoming a threat,
while your daughter gets called "aggressive" for speaking up,
while your name on a resume is a reason to keep scrolling?

No.

If I have access, I use it to open doors wider.
If I have voice, I amplify yours—not instead of, but alongside.
If I have safety, I put my body between you and harm.

We are rope. We are chain. We are tethered
whether we acknowledge it or not.

Your blood doesn't spill in a vacuum.
It lands on all our hands.

So when they come for you with their badges and their budgets,
their policies dressed up as protection,
their fear masquerading as law

I don't get to look away.
I don't get to call it unfortunate and go back to brunch.

This is the choice:
complicity or co-conspiracy.

I choose the second one.
I choose accountable.
 
Davos.

The clock licks one
minute to Kubrick

Pablo in Davos
what do you think?

The world is a cube
a great power cube
Blue. Logical. Psycho.


The clock droogs one
minute to orange.

Dali in Davos
what do you think?

Europe is a harlequin ship sailing
on pink sand licking ice creams.


Kubrick in Davos
what do you think?

A small ask. Now everyone’s
saying, Oh good. It was gorgeous

and gorgeously made flesh in Davos.


[5] @SapioSexual9 A gentleman always waits after ladies to finish first.
 
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For What Is the Difference Between a Rapper and a Poet?

A rapper is poet
A poet is rapper
I’m a rapper, baby
So why don’t you blow me?
See me rhyme aspect
It’s all about respect.
 
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Chambers of the Heart
By Bear Sage

°

There are chambers,

infinite rooms for every soul,

and in this vast cathedral of flesh

we feel the bitter hymn of grief

for another life gone,

another name on the wind.

°

In Minneapolis, the streets hold firelight and tears;

voices trembling into the cold January dusk,

carrying candles like ribbons of hope

against the night that swallows breath.

°

His name — a word of kindness,

spoken by those who knew his hands

that healed bodies and held hearts,

a nurse who walked among us

with love stitched into his sleeve.

°

And when the gunfire came,

it was not just steel that cracked

but the fragile glass of every tender thing

we keep beating beneath our ribs.

What is a heartbeat

if not an echo that answers every other?

°

They say the heart has four chambers

but this heart we speak is larger,

a cosmos spilling outward,

past bone, past bone…

where all of us reside:

the grieving and the hopeful,

the lost and the remembering,

breathing together

in that deep, moonlit gallery

of shared humanity and grief.

°

Can you hear it

the chamber music of our collective pulse?

soft as a mother’s lullaby,

loud as a thousand city prayers

rippling through cold streets tonight.

°

Here in the chamber of us,

we hold them

the tender, the wounded, the gone…

their names stitched into the slow drum

of every heart that still beats

for all who breathe.
 
Your hand in mine,
soft smiles, warm sighs.
World fades away,
only you and I.

Soft smiles, warm sighs,
heartbeats blend as one.
Only you and I,
wrapped up in this sun.

Heartbeats blend as one,
lost in every glance.
Wrapped up in this sun,
we dance like a trance.

Lost in every glance,
whispers fill the air.
We dance like a trance,
Your hand in mine.
 
Amimi's death in Teheran is a ghastly crime
But Pretti's murder in Minneapolis is Law Enforcement prime!!?
Is it really MAGA??
Or is it MAWA???!
Make America 🇺🇸 White Again??
U forced Third World 🌎 nations to Open
Up closed economies but when ur' own Pie shrunk....
Your fragile White ego on Nuclear Power got drunk....
And U claimed Greenland 🇬🇱
Now Artic storm hath turned USA 🇺🇸 to Iceland 🇮🇸
Putin grabbing Crimea is a Crime
But JFK landing on Bay of Pigs 🐖
Is supposed to be a Good Time!?
U stole Diego Garcia from the islanders
Poor Ted Kennedy protested and faced slanders....
Pouring Napalm in Vietnam is Good
But bombarding drones into Kyiev
Sets up incorrect mood??!!@$^_/_
Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in '68:
Arrested Dubcek was taken to Lubyanka!?
US Seals grabbed Maduro in hours 8:
He will be tried for smuggling Marijuana!?
Adnan Khashoggi was killed by MBS
BUT Prez Allendé was murdered by the US!?
 
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For What Is the Difference Between a Rapper and a Poet?

A rapper is poet
A poet is rapper
I’m a rapper, baby
So why don’t you blow me?
See me rhyme aspect
It’s all about respect.
Mock what what you don't understand?
Show respect, 'cuz I demand
Something more than ignorance
Or else just wear that cap of dunce

My rhyme is forged in pain and sorrow
That's always there, today, tomorrow
I live it, hate it, love it, feel it
I testify, and I unseal it

I've been through shit you'll never see
I'm black, they'll never let me be
Just don't listen, that's your choice
But I won't let you mock my voice
 
Putrescence

We walked down to the sea’s brittle calm,
One morning in that long ago.
We hardly spoke – when I recall the moment,
I hear only the sea’s voice – and I followed
You, brother, just as I had a long time before,

The sight of you when you came to save me
From the teacher’s wrath – you were one of the
Older boys, the ones who walked like giants
And the rest of us, eight and trembling with curiosity,
Could only gawk at the chasm between us and your kind.
I learnt kindness from you. I remember you smiled,
Never chided, patient, calm, a comfort.

And so I followed you, down the shore line, mutable, tumultuous,
Till the years bled and waned, till the distances
That mark our lives grew, festered, liked unspoken sores, putrid.

Brother, I never knew you,
Never knew your words,
but you knew me, didn’t you? You saw me,
That day when you saved me,
And chose to forget, forget
Kindness, forget the impulse to save.

Now, once again, we are at that brittle shoreline,
And I lead you to it, perhaps, to help you remember
Kindness, patience, to call the spirit of your giant
Back from the Hadean dark.

But you are not there.
And the sea speaks in Iniquity’s tongue.

Week 2, Poem 3, Total 3
 
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